The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-07-07
a KING OF CouNTERFEITERs.
The President Sets the Noted Thomas
Ballard Free.

spondent of the New York Times says: The
Presidents pardon sets at liberty man who
was IN his day unquestionahly the most
sllillful counterfeiter who has ever operated
in this country, but whose present condition
is such that Mr.. Brooks, Chief of the Secret
Service, who never before recommended the
pardon of a counterfeiter, favored his re-
lease, and when the fact of tho pardon was
announced to the Secret Service Bureau
this afternoon there was u general and
hearty exclamation of pleasure.
Thomas Ballard was born in New York
State i'll 1910. His parents We're from bos-
ton, and all their associations We're thor
oughly respectable, except that after the
boys took to counterfeiting a sister of the
mother was for years mixed up with them.
There were five sons and every one of them
took to counterfeiting. The father was a
carriage painter, and when Thomas was Is
he went to work for a carriage builder in
New York named Human. Human was
connected by marriage with Joshua Miner,
a powerful politician and a rich city con-
tractor. Miner saw that Ballard was a
remarkably bright fellow and had him
spend four years in one of the bank note
engraving concerns in New York learning
engraving, and be also enabled him to OBJ
tain good deal of information about the
way things were managed in the treasury.
From 1862 to 1870 wholesale manufacture
and distribution of counterfeit money was
carried on by Miner and Hinman as CAPT.
talists, Thomas Ballard as engraver, paper
maker and general scientist; John and some
other Ballard boys as assistants, and Cole
and others as agents and general distribu-
tors. Thomas Ballard solved the mystery
of the fibre paper used by the government
He could make the paper, engrave
the plates, make the ink and print the
notes, and his engraving is said by eX-
perts to have been equal to and often supe-
rior to any that in those early days was done
in the government Bureau of Engraving.
His fibre paper was just rs good as that
made for the government. This concern
was ready to counterfeit anything. Bal
lard's first work was a plate for the 81
greenback: then followed a 50 note on the
Shoe and Leather Bank of New York. Then
came plates for $40 bills of three national
banks in PoughkeepSie; $50 Shoe and
Leather bills, and finally plates for printing
500 and $500 Treasury notes, and this is
not an entire list.
Ballard married an estimable woman, the
lady to whom the President makes such g
graceful reference, and who supposed for
years that her husband was reputable car
riage painter, working in Humans shop
Ballard never drank or smoked he was per
fectly regular in his hours and fond of his
wife Her suspicious were never aroused till
the detectives got after him. Every morning
he left his house, 225 West Fifty-third
street, .ostensibly for Humans shop,
but went to 256 Rivington street, where
the counterfeit money was made. There he
shut himself up in his room, and staid there
till toward night. On Rivington street he
was understood to be night Waterman in
the custom house, who of course slept all
day and went to work as evening APP
preached. Ballard lived this double life for
tit1rr c1,CyN Bali ,.1
was arrested in October 1871, with some of
his confederates, and was locked up in Lud-
low street Jail, but the next month he
escaped, whether by his own ingenuity or
Miners money and influence is not known
Miner was afraid of his testimony
For nearly three years Ballard was a
fugitive from Justice, and no trace of him
could be found, although a reward of So, 900
was out for him. Finally the police of
Buffalo got hold of George Ballard, and by
threats and by promises of immunity they
induced him to point out the house where
his brothers. his aunt and another woman
were carrying on their business The house
was surrounded and all the occupants cap
tured. In the house was a scientific
library, fine chemical laboratory quaint
ties of plain and fibred bank note
paper, and every appliance Tor counter
feiting on large scale. The plates were
not very good, far inferior to the work of
Thomas Ballard, except one extremely fine
plate on a Canadian bank that Thomas was
at work on. Five men divided the reward
between them, among whom was Reed, who
had distributed the queer" money, but
whose daughter had been BETRAYED by Ben
Ballard, and who wanted revenge. Ben
Ballard was sent to Michigan; George was
allowed to go West free; William Ballard
had, about the same time, been arrested in
Lockport, n. Y, for passing counterfeit
money, and Thomas was taken to the county
Jail at Auburn. He picked the lead
out of the settings of a grating, cast
key, opened the doors, and walked out of
Jail. He telegraphed to Miner for money,
and Miner sent it, but when Ballard went
to the express office he was arrested and
taken to the county Jail in Albany In
January, 1875, he got out of that jail, but
was very soon captured He was tried the
same month before Judge Wallace and SEN
fenced to two terms in the Albany peniten-
tiary of fifteen years, one to begin as soon
as the other was completed. Martin l.
Townsend, the Prosecuting Attorney,
thought the sentence too severe,
and is one of the persons
who recommended the pardon. In prison
he has been perfectly docile, has worked
hard, and never made any trouble except
that he has twice made savage efforts to kill
himself. In 1873 he tried to eviscerate him
self ana TO Diced himself TO death, and in
1879 he partly cut his throat His health
has failed greatly and his melancholy has
deepened till fears were entertained that his
mind would give way entirely All these
years his wife has strained every nerve to
secure her husbands pardon. When Bal
lard was tried he said that ever
since he PASSED from Ludlow street
Jail he had been trying to get an
honest living at his trade, but the detec-
tives had logged him, and he had had
to keep moving constantly He said that in
the house where he was arrested. he
was simply experimenting with a view to
discovering way of making paper and
printing notes that would defy counterfeit
ing, and when his work was completed he
meant to offer it to the government as
means Of settling up the old account against
him. At various times since his incarcar-
ceration he has made overtures to the Treas
urTy authorities with view to trading his
information for pardon, but no attention
has been paid to these offers.
There are no estimates of the whole
amount of counterfeit money that Thomas
Ballard and his associates put into circula-
ton, but John Ballard testified in court
that he worked with his brother in the Riv-
ington street establishment for three Of the
eight or nine years that concern was in
operation, and while he was there the OUTPUT
was usually about $4,000 a month. The
Secret Service people estimated that
nuFalo